Posted on 05/13/2002 11:42:33 AM PDT by tenderstone jr.
HOUSTON - On one side of the white construction paper, Ann Blessinger has her students write "King of England," on the other, "colonists." The assignment: Describe how each side felt leading up the Revolutionary War.
This is a lesson in perspective - it's easy to forget that there are two sides to every story, she explains to the 7th graders.
The kids begin: Sad faces appear next to the colonists after the Stamp Act; angry faces appear next to the king after the Boston Tea Party.
Perspective is not a new concept to historians. But in this state - where legendary outsized proportion and emotion dominate views of the past - this is a radical step.
The old way of teaching the Texas Revolution - the freedom-loving Americans against the tyrannical Mexicans, or good versus evil - is falling by the way as fast as the myths surrounding the Alamo.
With an increasingly Hispanic population, Texas school teachers are feeling pressure to bring more perspective to state history, which students must study in the 4th and 7th grade.
The battles that led to Texas' independence, for instance, are still hard for Mexico to swallow: They eventually meant the loss of half the country's land. And as the Hispanic population quickly becomes a majority in this state, teachers, historians, and museum directors are realizing that celebrating these accomplishments without regard to their southern neighbors isn't cutting it anymore.
"The standard line we used was that we won and they lost; and no one really questioned who 'we' was," says Angela Miller, manager for social studies curriculum with the Houston Independent School District and a history teacher of 20 years. "You can't do that anymore."
At Burbank Middle School in north Houston, Ms. Blessinger says, "We teach a lot of kids who have just come from Mexico and many who still have loyalties to Mexico. You do have to be very aware of who is in your room."
She says she's careful to stress the Mexican Army's point of view, and spends extra time on the important Mexican figures who fought alongside American settlers - a concept foreign to teachers just a few years ago.
"Students nowadays are more willing to challenge opinion expressed in the classroom," says Ms. Miller. "That means we need to prepare our teachers to respond to that challenge and not feel threatened by it."
This kind of sensitivity to past struggles is happening all over the country, says Adrian Anderson, a history professor at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.
"We're seeing a kinder, more understanding treatment given to matters like Reconstruction, the Civil War, and the Texas Revolution," says Dr. Anderson, who helps revise Texas textbooks. "We are trying to present a more balanced view of who we are." He says it's commonly held in his discipline that every age rewrites history according to the values and concerns of the time. "In effect, that's what we're seeing here. Texas today is concerned with matters of race and ethnicity and gender."
Bigger-is-better sensibility
To understand why this is such a radical step in the teaching of Texas history, one must first understand just how important a role the past plays in the hearts of Texans today.
Unlike other states that commonly offer public school students a year or less of state history, Texas requires two - in the 4th and 7th grades.
The state is littered with monuments, museums, and historical markers of famous moments in Texas history. In typical Texan bigger-is-better attitude, these were built to overshadow all else. For instance, the 570-foot San Jacinto Monument - commemorating the battle that ended the Texas Revolution - is the tallest monument column in the world, higher than the Washington Monument.
Whole websites and archives are dedicated to tracing family heritage to a "Texian" - a citizen of the Republic of Texas. Any other Texan is considered not quite native.
And Hollywood director Ron Howard's interest in making a movie about the Alamo has caused an uproar among Texans who are proprietary about their history. The possible movie is causing more controversy than whether Davy Crockett actually wore a coonskin cap during the battle.
"I think what surprises [Mr. Howard] is that he hasn't shot a frame of this movie yet, or even finished the script - he's just talking about the possibility of making an Alamo movie - and already he's getting all this negative press," says Stephen Hardin, a history professor at Victoria College, in Victoria, Texas.
"Where is it written that someone who wants to make a movie on the Alamo has to get the permission of every single person in Texas?" asks Dr. Hardin, who was one of a handful of historians who spent the day with Howard last week.
"We make such a big deal of our history because we have themost interesting history of any other state," says Ron Tyler, director of the Texas State Historical Association at the University of Texas in Austin.
"We were our own country for 10 years, electing presidents and a Congress and sending ambassadors abroad."
Mexico, however, sees that period in its own rich history differently - more dimly. Mexicans, being the losers, don't like to talk about that as much as Texans do, says José Pablo Fernandez, president of the Mexican Cultural Institute of Houston. He's encouraged by this more sensitive treatment of history, but believes more can be done. He'd like to see the presidents of Mexico and the US meet at the San Jacinto Monument and shake hands. He'd also like to see another, smaller monument placed next to the towering column in honor of the Mexican soldiers who died fighting for what they believed in.
Not John Wayne to the rescue
As Mexican-Americans, that period in history "still burns us," says Ernesto Nieto, founder of the National Hispanic Institute in Maxwell, Texas. "Texas and its fascination with history has caused a real division among people whose blood roots run deep in this land."
Mr. Nieto still remembers wanting to hide under his desk every time the subject of the Texas Revolution came up in school. He was embarrassed by the depiction of Mexico, his homeland, as a tyrannical country peopled with banditos. And even as a child of 10, he knew that version of history was one-sided.
As he grew up, he says, "I used to get so angry that Texas history failed to mention that the issue of liberation, the issue of independence, the issue of freedom was a Mexican issue. It wasn't a bunch of John Waynes coming in to save our souls."
Indeed, the Texas Revolution didn't start out as a revolution.
It began as a civil war when Mexican federalists challenged the new centrist government of Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who essentially undid the Mexican Constitution of 1824 that had been patterned after the US Constitution.
Many American settlers in the Mexican state of Texas were loyal to these federalists and took up arms alongside them.
"When I was in 7th grade, the Texas Revolution was taught in terms of a cultural conflict, that the two cultures were simply too different, read: that the Anglo Celtic cultures were superior and the Hispanic Mexican cultures were inferior," Professor Hardin. "Nothing could have been further from the truth. These two cultures had been existing together, thank you very much, for years."
I could be wrong, but the smart money's the other way.
Say what you will about the Spaniards, but they were far superior than the Aztecs in terms of humanity. There is a good reason why many Indian tribes sided with the Spaniards against the Aztecs, which allowed the Spaniards to more easily conquer Emperor Moctezuma.
Remember also that the population of Mexico, Peru, Bolivia and a few other countries are largely Amerindian in racial composition. Santa Ana, however, was as pasty faced as I am.
I checked in with some Teachers and they confirmed that there was no classes that day for the Mexican Holiday of Cindo de Mayo. A Beer Holiday.
So what is this fifth of May? Is it similar to our Fourth of July? NO!
This Mexican holiday is for an event that occured AFTER the Texas Revolution and AFTER the US invaded Mexico and took Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and the Left Coast (cal).
It was for a battle that Mexico did not win. A French force laid seige on some Mexican city, got bored and then left after figuring out that it was not worth the trouble.
The Teachers that I spoke with were told that this school Holiday was for culture sensitivity. It is still a day to sell Mexican Beer. We do not have a day for the fall of the Alamo, no holiday for San Jacinto Day but we fly our flags year round for pride of our State and our history.
To have thrust upon Texas a day with no historical value is akin to California having a holiday for Juneteenth...it is meaningless and a laugh for those who know what it is.
Play Deguello.
From the resolution admitting Texas to the US:
Third, New States, of convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas, and having sufficient population, may hereafter, by the consent of the said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the federal constitution. And as such States as may be formed out of that portion of said territory lying south of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, commonly known as the Missouri compromise line, shall be admitted to the Union with or without slavery, as the people of each State asking permission may desire. And in such State or States as shall be formed north of said Missouri compromise line, slavery, or involuntary servitude, (except for crime) shall be prohibited.
Not written about in the history books, when Texas won its independence from Mexico, we owned what is now Colorado and eastern New Mexico. When we became a state, we lost these two chunks of land. Now we have to lease them out for hunting and skiing.
Wrong. Texas still claimed those areas till 1850. It was the Compromise of 1850 that created the current border. In that compromise California was admitted as a free state (while not simultaneously adding another slave state); Texas gave up its claims to portions of what is today New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming; the US Treasury paid off all of the Texas state debt. Most of the legislators who voted to accept this offer were voted out of office. 
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First: The State of Texas will river to the Gulf of Mexico. Second. The State of Texas Third. the State of Texas |
I did wonder why I had to pay an out-of-state fee to hunt there.
Take a tour of The Alamo some time. I can remember, as a kid, going there for the first time in the fifties. They explained the 13 day battle as they walk you around the compound, they explained to you the meaning of everything that happened there. The last part of the tour was the mission itself. I'll never forget it, it was July in San Anton and it was hotter than a fire. As the guide opened the huge wooden door to the mission building he discribed how the last men loaded their muskets (for the last time) while others blockaded the doors to give the others time. The surviving heros massed at the alter in the back of the church for the last assualt. You know the rest.
To this day, on any day, you can walk to that alter and as you get closer the temperature goes down. In August you will shiver from your own sweat when you stand at that alter.
The last time I went to the Alamo I had to give the tour, they've replace it with a video tape and signs with arrows, and those annoying little "legends" you have to read. Well, I gave my own guided tour to my friends from out of state that had never been there before (That had to be my 100th trip to The Alamo). By the time me, and my friends, got done we had collected about 25 more people, listening to me, and wiping their eyes. When we got to the mission chapel I told them what had happened and told them to walk, slowly, to the alter. I just smiled as I saw the same reaction that everybody has (try it sometime).
As a boy from Texas that served in combat I'll tell you this, the men of Alamo guided me through that, and they'll guide me through any battle I'll ever be in. They truely died on their feet, before they'd live on their knees.
If you don't know the story, learn it, and learn it right. Then tell your children, and have them tell your grandchildren, and on, and on, forever! The GD public school system is making cowards out of our children! Make those kids heros, tell them the great stories of courage and patriotism the way I taught my son, and the way he'll teach his son.
Stats to remember for a liberal debate:
1) Less than 200 men in the Alamo.
2) 3000 reinforced Mexican Military troopes outside of the Alamo.
3) 6 cannons for the Texicans (patriots inside the Alamo).
4) 13 days of Glory, for the men of Alamo!
The story (legend...history) goes that in those 13 days the Texicans cut down Santa Anna's force by one third, while Sam Houston built the Texas regular force to face the invading Mexican Army. The brave men of Alamo bought time, with blood, and their lives, for Sam Houston to defeat the invading army of Santa Anna at San Jasinto. For that sacrifice, their lives and love will always be remembered in the battle cry of the Army of Texas...."Remember The Alamo"!
Those heros, still look down on Texas, and they look out for her.
Liberal/leftist/commie ba$tards always hate, and dispise courage,....and this is the most couragous place I know. Let them attack, the sheer numbers will make MY point. Let the socialists try to tear it apart, they can't....it happened, and it didn't happen by accident. The purpose of the Alamo is implanted in every free man's heart. The chill of that alter will hold every patriots soul, and it will change it them forever.
They paid off the Texas Federal debt at the time we signed the Treaty of Annexation.
Should I worry about how the English feel as I celebrate the 4th of July?
Excellent question. . .with all the studying as to the meaning and historical content of "Come and Take It", I've never enquired as to where is the original flag. Perhaps your friendly Amarillo Banker could answer? I'll check a couple of Texas History websites. God bless Texas!
If they are to become American citizens, they need to learn to pledge their loyalties to the United States Of America. They should also be taught that the state they they chose to move to is Texas which was formerly an independent republic itself. This is history.
To teach that the Mexico that the Texians wanted to declare independence from "wasn't all that bad" is to miss the point. What if Mexico was a paradise? Should Texas cecede and reunite with Mexico today? Should the citizens of Texas or the United States pay reparations to Mexico?
Mexico still has not returned the Alamo battle flag. I wonder how things are taught across the border.
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